Wednesday 11 July 2007 afternoon ceremony

Jonathan Dimbleby (LLD)

(Unfortunately Mr Dimbleby is now unable to attend)

Jonathan Dimbleby was educated at Charterhouse School and at University College, London where he read Philosophy and where he is now a Fellow. He is a writer, broadcaster and film-maker. As a reporter for ITV’s This Week programme he covered crises, conflicts and disasters in more than 80 countries. In 1973 he won BAFTA’s Richard Dimbleby Award for his coverage of the famine in Ethiopia.

He was the first presenter of BBC’s On The Record from 1987 to 1992. He presented ITV’s flagship weekly political programme, Jonathan Dimbleby, from 1995 until May 2006. He has presented Any Questions? and Any Answers? for BBC Radio 4 since 1987. He was ITV’s anchorman for the 1997, 2001 and 2005 general elections.

In 1994 he wrote, presented and co-produced Charles, the Private Man, the Public Role for ITV. In 1997 his five-part documentary series, The Last Governor, about the final years of British rule in Hong Kong, was screened by BBC1. His documentaries about Ethiopia and Kosovo were shown by the ITV network in 1998 and 2000 respectively. His three-part series The New World War – about terrorism, poverty and the environment – was broadcast by ITV in 2004.

Jonathan Dimbleby’s publications include Richard Dimbleby (1975), The Palestinians (1979), The Prince of Wales (1994), and The Last Governor (1997). Among his charitable commitments, he is president of the Soil Association and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), chairman of the Susan Chilcott Scholarship and trustee of Dimbleby Cancer Care.

Posy Simmonds (DLitt)

Posy Simmonds was born and brought up near Cookham in Berkshire. She studied Art and French in Paris before attending the Central School of Art and Design in London.

As a student she worked briefly as a dogwalker, a French governess in Greece, a cleaner, and sold Pyrex in Harrods. On graduation, she began work as a freelance illustrator.

She is best known for the weekly comic strips and serialised graphic novels that have appeared in The Guardian since 1977. The collected cartoons were published as Mrs Weber’s Diary, True Love, Very Posy, Pure Posy and Literary Life. The book version of Gemma Bovery, a daily serial during 1999, was translated into seven languages and won several awards.

Posy Simmonds has illustrated for a wide range of magazines, newspapers and books, including Daisy Ashford’s The Young Visiters and Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for the Folio Society. She is also the author of several books for children, among them Lulu and the Flying Babies and Fred, of which the film version was nominated for an Oscar in 1998. Cartoonist of the Year in 1980 and 1981, she was also the winner of the National Art Library Illustration Award in 1998.

Posy Simmonds has lived for a time in Cornwall, where her mythical village Tresoddit was created and filmed as a BBC2 documentary. She now lives in London.